Trump threatens social media outlets over censorship of conservatives
President Trump on Wednesday claimed social media outlets are censoring conservatives and threatened to shut them down – a day after Twitter added a fact-checking link to his tweet about mail-in voting.
“Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives [sic] voices. We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen. We saw what they attempted to do, and failed, in 2016. We can’t let a more sophisticated version of that happen again,” the president wrote.
“Just like we can’t let large scale Mail-In Ballots take root in our Country. It would be a free for all on cheating, forgery and the theft of Ballots. Whoever cheated the most would win. Likewise, Social Media. Clean up your act, NOW!!!!”
On Tuesday, Twitter attached links to Trump’s postings claiming that allowing large scale mail-in voting would result in a “rigged election.”
“Get the facts about mail-in ballots,” the warning states, and links to news articles disputing that voting-by-mail would allow for rampant fraud.
A report on Wednesday showed that Twitter’s “Head of Site Integrity” Yoel Roth, who is in charge of enforcing the social media site’s rules, has a history of politically loaded posts.
Roth, according to Fox News, referred to team Trump as “ACTUAL NAZIS” and called Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell a “personality-free bag of farts.”
In September 2016, Roth tweeted, “I’ve never donated to a presidential campaign before, but I just gave $100 to Hillary for America. We can’t f–k around anymore.”
In January 2017, Roth tweeted, “Today on Meet the Press, we’re speaking with Joseph Goebbels about the first 100 days…”– What I hear whenever Kellyanne [Conway] is on a news show.”
Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said Twitter should call out posts containing claims with “no evidence.”
“I’m of the view that social media companies have to reexamine whether or not — for example, if you put something out saying that same outlandish thing that the president thinks, a talk show host on cable committed murder, I mean, you’d say, there’s no evidence for that at all, zero,” the former vice president told CNN in an interview that aired Tuesday.
Asked if Twitter should do something, Biden said, “I think they should.”
“I think they should say when things are patently not true, they should say so,” he said.
Source: Read Full Article